New Glenn: how to watch Blue Origin’s next big rocket launch

Jan 11, 2025 10:04 PM - 6 days ago 8533

Blue Origin is preparing for 1 of its biggest launches yet. On Sunday, the Jeff Bezos-owned commercialized abstraction institution will effort to nonstop its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket into abstraction for the first time.

The motorboat comes aft almost a decade of development, and its result could frighten the power of Elon Musk’s SpaceX — not only in the commercialized abstraction industry but besides successful the outer net business. Here’s an overview of what you request to cognize astir the New Glenn formation and really to watch it live.

What is New Glenn, and why is it important?

First announced successful 2016, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is meant to shuttle cargo, satellites, and, successful the future, group into space. The New Glenn is named aft John Glenn, the first NASA astronaut to participate the Earth’s orbit.

Its first shape is powered by 7 of Blue Origin’s powerful BE-4 engines, which tally connected liquified earthy state and liquid oxygen. Blue Origin intends to reuse New Glenn’s first shape for astatine slightest 25 missions, arsenic it’s designed to touch down vertically connected a sea-based level pursuing launch, allowing the institution to retrieve it.

The rocket’s precocious shape is disposable and carries Blue Origin’s payload. It’s tin of sending 13 metric tons to geostationary transportation orbit and 45 metric tons to debased Earth orbit. Blue Origin says New Glenn is besides “engineered pinch the information and redundance required to alert humans.” Though Blue Origin initially aimed to motorboat New Glenn successful 2020, its inaugural formation kept getting pushed back owed to issues pinch the development of its BE-4 engine and other method mishaps.

As pointed retired by NPR, New Glenn has a akin carrying capacity to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, but it stands retired pinch a larger, 23-foot-wide cargo bay. If New Glenn’s motorboat is successful, it could power up its rivalry pinch SpaceX arsenic some companies vie to unafraid lucrative authorities contracts.

New Glenn is besides cardinal to Amazon’s Project Kuiper outer net initiative. Though the company’s first group of satellites is scheduled to launch aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket this year, Blue Origin will yet launch Project Kuiper satellites aboard New Glenn, rivaling SpaceX’s Starlink. Amazon plans to nonstop 3,236 Project Kuiper satellites into space, which is still acold less than Starlink’s increasing constellation of much than 6,000 satellites.

What to expect from New Glenn’s first launch

New Glenn is group to return disconnected from Cape Canaveral, Florida, pinch a three-hour motorboat model opening connected January 12th astatine 1AM ET (10PM PT). The motorboat was primitively scheduled for January 10th, but it was pushed back owed to “a precocious oversea authorities successful the Atlantic.”

During this uncrewed launch, New Glenn will person the Blue Ring Pathfinder connected board, a payload consisting of a communications array, a powerfulness system, and a formation computer. It will trial the company’s Blue Ring spacecraft, which will thief support missions pinch refueling, hosting, information relay, and unreality computing capabilities. The extremity is for New Glenn to scope orbit, while “anything beyond that,” for illustration landing its reusable booster is simply a “bonus,” according to Blue Origin CEO David Limp.

The Blue Ring Pathfinder will beryllium aboard the New Glenn during its first launch.

Image: Blue Origin

“This is our first formation and we’ve prepared rigorously for it,” Jarrett Jones, the elder vice president of New Glenn, said successful a statement. “But nary magnitude of crushed testing aliases ngo simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket. It’s clip to fly. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and use that knowledge to our adjacent launch.”

How to watch New Glenn’s motorboat live

Blue Origin will apt watercourse the motorboat unrecorded from its website and YouTube channel. We’ll embed the watercourse beneath erstwhile it becomes available.